Measure F wins approval, gives Modesto schools option to elect by area

Voters overwhelmingly approved a city charter change to allow Modesto City Schools Board members to be elected by region.

Final election night returns showed “yes” votes outpaced “no” votes 68 percent to 32 percent.

The decision to move forward to switch from at-large elections will still have to pass a vote of the board, but is expected to pass. Deciding how to draw the lines is the difficult part.

The change is needed to comply with the California Voting Rights Act and avoid being sued, district lawyer Roman Muñoz told the board as they decided to put the measure on the ballot.

As the charter stands, the seven trustees must be at-large representatives, meaning they can live anywhere in the high school district and are elected by the entire high school district, about 116,000 voters.

Measure F will change the city charter to permit the board to choose by-area elections, where seven regions of equal population would each elect a representative who lives in the area. The change is meant to help minority candidates by making it easier to mount a grassroots campaign. Instead of 116,000 mailers, a regional campaign would be sending out 16,500.

Complicating the split, Modesto City Schools is actually two districts that share a single administration. Its elementary schools and junior highs serve south and central Modesto, while its high schools serve teens from all over Modesto, Salida, Empire and rural areas nearby.

Current Modesto board members all live in central or northern Modesto, while the majority of the district’s students live in south and west areas of Modesto.

The lack of board diversity, in ethnic makeup as well as address, became a rallying cry for the African American community as the board appointed a replacement member in February.

The Latino Community Roundtable pressed Stanislaus County districts to switch to the by-area elections, and Modesto is the last of the larger school districts still voting at-large.

The city of Modesto fought and lost the first of the lawsuits under the California Voting Rights Act, agreeing to the split and paying $3 million as part of a settlement reached in 2007. Since then, no school district has won any similar lawsuit, Muñoz said.

Smaller voting areas have their problems, however, with off-year elections seeing very small turnouts and margins of victory. Patterson Unified’s seat for Area 4 was won by a single vote, 55 to 54, in November. There has also been an uptick in races with no one filing to run. The board appoints to fill its seats in those cases, but still must find a willing participant from the area.

Tuesday’s vote was an encore for Measure F, which by mistake was not sent to district voters outside the city limits of Modesto on the November ballot. The mistake was traced to a city clerk and will cost the city up to $325,000. The school district paid for the first ballot during the November election, $5,781.

This story was originally published June 7, 2016 at 8:49 PM with the headline "Measure F wins approval, gives Modesto schools option to elect by area."